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Potential electriccity
| Digging volcanoes comes with its own side of risks, lightning is not nearly as common enough to actuallt be usable and the work you need to catch and store them is not even remotely close to the possible benefits since one bolt would barely keep a hood up for a week
| >>803829 what if for example city had large central battery for purpose saving lighting energy and when would thunderstorm hits lighting rod, electricity would be aimed directly to battery, and from this source would some houses getting energy, and meanwhile other elsctricity plants would distribute electricity to other cities, villages or would be used for pumped storage hydroelectricity i feel that it can be basically free electricity when would infrastructure exists xd
| >>803833
Problem is volcanoes is that they are dangerous as fuck. Along with getting the lightning from the hot and noxious gasses from a volcano that is erupting seems incredibly dangerous. Along with it being not very renewable. Happening only after a single eruption.
That being said. Places like Clearwater,FL of which have frequent storms and lightning strikes may benefit from trying to harness the power of lightning. Due to the sheer frequency of strikes.
| About volcanos, i have no direct idea how it can be build, probably as thermal electricity plant what would be close lava source.. but it can exists better solutions maybe xd also since earth core is naturally hot, it could be really interesting to use it. I'm not telling that it is not difficult just i have feel that all public interest is aimed to wind, water, sun.. less to usage of nuclear or research in thermonuclear fusion and others totally forgetting about natural sources
| >>803835 personally would like a greater push to nuclear since it is so reliable and the only downside being the waste which is simply dealt with by shoving it underground and forgetting about it. Along with it acting as a stop gap until us monkeys figure out something better.
A thermal plant around specific volcanos or even just the more naturally occurring geothermal activity could work. Since you have places like Iceland which run off heavily geothermal power.
| Many communities across the world have experimented with fueling their metalworking with volcanic energy in the past, and I see no purpose in delaying this any further. It is more ecologically viable to take the iron ore from the mines of Donetsh, transport it across the sea to Iceland and have it processed into steel there than to burn thousands of tons of coal to replicate what nature already gave us.
| Don't ask why, but Cobalt is the solution. Trust me.
| It seems to be the nature of humans to reinvent the wheel when it is simple enough to have goods distributed according to the law of comparative advantage.
Frankly, with the prices of coal being what they are, it is ridiculous the Ukrainians aren't doing that *already*.
| Harvesting lightning is an EXTREMELY bad idea. You're taking the power out of storms if you do that. On a large scale, yeah less hurricanes and tornadoes. On a smaller scale, be prepared to have widespread drought because there's no rain.
Messing with the electrical charge of our atmosphere has never made nature happy.
| Additionaly, how the hell are you gonna harvest all that energy? Specifically, how do you convert 3 million volts and 30 thousand amps to something a battery can hold? That crazy amount of power can instantly melt sand into glass. Entire cities of lightning rods are used to distribute that load to ground.
Also, if you try to charge a battery with a single lightning, it'll pop. Even if you have a lithium battery the size of a football stadium, it will pop. It's just too much power.
| >>803857 but isn't waste load electricity to ground?
It is only theoretical concept what need remake just like actual nuclear fusion or nuclear powered calculator, just because concept doesnt work or is overkill doesn't mean that shouldnt have be researched.. what if we instead one football stadium had 4 or20? What if was battery large as one city, and it can work on continental or global level?I feel that is little wrong that main research is aimed only to nuclear fusion
| I wish to use that "crazy amount of power" what can pop baterries ^^
| The reason we aren't harvesting lightning is because we have no feasable way to convert and store 5 fucking billion joules of energy into an alternating current, during a fraction of a second, without blowing out the collection system in a single large strike.
It's not a new idea, and has been attempted many times, and we're not even remotely close to understanding how it's supposed to be achieved. It may not even be realistically possible to do.
| Speaking of crazy
| Err, speaking of crazy ways to harvest energy. Have you heard of the concept of building a giant tube, containing a coiled wire, and burrowing it at one of earths magnetic poles? If you paid attention during your highschool physics classes you should already know what this is.
| Another crazier yet similarily useless idea is to build a giant gyroscope at one of earths poles, start it with a motor, and let it spin endlessly. The difference between the gyroscope, and earth´s rotation would create a tourge which, if we can figure out how to make a near-frictionless material, can be harvested into energy.
| >>803885 i never heard about it, but i'm from europe, if it's american thing.. can i ask for source please? ^^
>>803886 and this too please ^^
| >>888187 already harvesting vulcanic energy with thermal electricity.
Lightning on the other hand doesn't seem plausable: hard to contain and repurpose
| >>805278
Nah, earths magnetic field is extremely weak anyway. A common fridge magnet is 40.000 more magnetic than earth, for example.
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| It is a lot speech about nuclear fusion.. but what about vulcanic activity or lighting? Wouldn't it be awesome and ecological source of electriccity? We wouldn't need to build any kind of reactor, when earth itself is one reactor "^^